Make Believe Mailer Vol. 28: Early Japanese Music Highlights 2018
Despite feeling like it is just zooming by, 2018 remains pretty young. With three months off the calendar, now seems like a good time to to take stock and point out a few early highlights in Japanese music this year. In general, the first three months have felt relatively slow for J-pop, which I want to say feels about right...except my favorite album of 2017 was out in early February, so nope. But looking beyond major label offerings, there have been a lot of great releases. Here are a few worth adding into your rotation.
Various Artists Bojou In Da Tracks
"Bojou Tracks is a label for sensitive hearts," and that really does end up the unifying theme for their first compilation. Musically, this set jumps all over the place, touching on jazz-dabbed soft pop to sample-centric electronic numbers to whisper rap. It's a great display of independent artists simply going down their own path, but then those emotions sneak in, lending every inclusion on the comp a sense of melancholy.
RGL Machine Love
Producer Rigly Chang goes by RGL when making house tracks, and Machine Love offers up their best set of numbers yet. All three songs blend together nicely, turning this into one big journey rather than a grab bag of dance cuts. And smack-dab in the middle is the astro-funk of "LinnQ," one of the year's more loose-limbed creations.
Falsettos Falsettos
The first taste of this album offered up a slightly too-sunny impression of what was to come. Falsettos' first full-length album finds the quartet exploring the tension between accessible rock and more experimental sounds, underlined by synthesizer whirlwinds lurking underneath otherwise steady rock numbers and all-together-now singing delivered over sitar-based foundations.
Mom Baby Like A Paperdriver
My better judgement tells me not to indulge in trying to coin new terms...but the music writer heart begs me to sputter away. So...Japan's electronic music community might have moved into a post-netlabel era that's starting to come into full view. "I mean, every label is a netlabel," a netlabel co-founder told me recently, and he's totally right. And the genre-skirting thrill that defined the heyday of Maltine Records or Bunkai-kei Records now feels far more regular, possibly because Tofubeats now can write theme songs to dramas (what a world!). Baby Like A Paperdriver offers a snapshot of how independent artists -- kids who grew up when netlabels were bubbling up, and who are digital natives -- are adjusting. Mom swerves between singing and rapping with ease, doing both over sparse boom-bap or acoustic guitar strums. He shouts out the internet before delivering a heartfelt hook buffered by flute. One second dude's quoting Kanye, next he's penning a strong indie-pop inspired slow burn. No album so far has made me as giddy to see where the next generation of creators -- Mom, Native Rapper, Lulu, plenty more just waiting to emerge -- go next.
Stones Taro Scarf EP
If my head could always just sound like this album, I'd be way less stressed out than I am now!
iri Juice
Wherein J-pop's current fascination with all things funk and acid jazz results in something with edge. Part of Juice's success belong to the producers, showing off new sides to their style (Kenmochi Hidefumi of Suiyoubi No Campanella, flexing some variety in the middle) or adding some stranger touches to the corner of city-pop-inspired swagger (Tokyo Recordings team Yaffle and Nariaki Obukuro...who, quick aside, is weeks away from dropping J-pop's first great album of 2018...who muck up the corners of otherwise radio-eyeing songs such as "Corner" and album highlight "Drive Slow"). But you need an artist (and co-writer) who can bring all that to life, and iri sets herself apart from other up-and-coming singers on major labels thanks to her deeper voice and ability to swing into a downright giddy rap when needed ("Fruits (Midnight)").
Xinlisupreme I Am Not Shinzo Abe
Ahhh, the real reason you subscribe to this newsletter...a chance to see my Google Calendar. I'm currently working on a profile of Xinlisupreme tied to this album, so it's been getting a ton of play and really wowing with each run through. But it would land on this list thanks to the title track alone, a scorcher doubling as my personal platonic ideal of the best sort of political song. Rather than indulge in metaphor or force the listener to murk about in subtext, Xinlisupreme just fucking get to the point and make it clear what they are about -- "I AM NOT SHINZO ABE." And that's all you need to hit someone in the heart.
Going through the blog to make this list, I realized...a lot of great music has already come out! A few others worth your time: Oyubi's My Fingers, yahyel's Human, Haruno's Filia, Phew's Voice Hardcore (already gotten plenty of great reviews, didn't need to blurb it here!), EMPiRE's THE EMPire STRiKES START, Satanicpornocults' The Rise And Fall Of..., and Metome's Shibboleth.
News And Views
There were, like, eight big viral videos in Japan this week, ranging from a sumo ring (but actually sexism) controversy, to shitty baseball fans, to Ohtani-mania (which I'M LOVING as an Angels fan). Buried in their was minor geopolitical drama when the new TVXQ video happened to erase the entire country of Japan from the world map. Whoopsie! Still, doesn't touch this in terms of accidental (ahem, "accidental") pop crisis.
Boy band factory Johnny's continues its turtle-like crawl to the digital age. They've started allowing Avex to upload clips of their artists to YouTube, which is pretty wild for said talent agency. Anything is possible in 2018.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of March 26, 2018 to April 1, 2018
Had you told me in 2014 that, one day, a BiS-adjacent pop group would be at the top of the Oricon weekly singles chart, I would have assumed BiS actually didn't break up and their upward trajectory just kept on going somehow. Yet here we are, with BiSH delivering WACK their first chart-topping single. Really shows how far they've come...and how embedded in the mainstream J-pop establishment they are, for better or for worse.
Perfume's GAME (33 1/3)
My entry in the 33 1/3 Japan series is out now! Get a copy at Bloomsbury or Amazon. I've been happy to hear that people who have read it are most happy about the historical context that the book puts Perfume in. And, to get goopy for a second, it's genuinely amazing to see people tweet photos of their copy of the book at me...I kind of still can't believe it is a thing that exists in a tangible way.
Anyway, my biggest regret with the book is that I did not spend anytime writing about Coltemonikha. I will try to fix that in this newsletter, stay tuned!
Look At Me!
I went on the Mega Late Show podcast here in Tokyo! Talked about the book, Sleet Mage and the formative role Kanye West played in my life. Check it out! And dig into the archives, a lot of great guests.
Blog highlights: CHAI, Still Dreams and House Of Tapes.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
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